Salman Abedi’s deadly suicide bombing in Manchester, UK, shocked Britain and other Western nations – many of which have been waging war against so-called terrorists across the Middle East.

When the attack happened, suspicion fell on ISIS. The extremist group didn’t waste time claiming responsibility for the heinous attack, which left 22 people dead, the majority of them children.

Manchester wasn’t the first in Europe to suffer from the brutality of ISIS. Paris, Brussels, and Nice are some European cities that were hit in the past by ISIS’s brutality. After each of these attacks, candles were burnt and messages of condolence and condemnation flooded the media. Western political leaders argue these rituals are needed to tell the terrorists that Westerners are more united than ever before.

However, in the discourse, the leaders have deliberately avoided the hard and difficult question: why are terrorists now targeting Western citizens on their own soil? The leader of the British Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and former American politician Ron Paul can easily provide the answer: needless wars in the Middle East after the 9/11 attack.

Since Abedi’s attack, journalists have dug deeper to understand what inspired the devastating event. The Wall Street Journal reports that only days before Abedi blew himself up in Manchester, he told his parents he was leaving their home in Libya to go on a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

Abedi was born in Manchester on New Year’s Eve in 1994. In 2011, when Abedi was still a teenager, he traveled to Libya and fought alongside his father in a militia known as the Tripoli Brigade, against Muammar Gaddafi. The Tripoli Brigade was actively supported by Britain and the U.S.

Three years after NATO helped the rebels kill Gaddafi, Abedi and his mother returned to Britain. He enrolled at the University of Salford in 2015, to study business administration. After just a year, he dropped out. Libya had descended into total chaos after Gaddafi was killed. The country became a failed state. The promise by Western leaders to help Libyans build a democracy turned out to be a lie. Rather, the West began looting Libya’s resources instead.

Western leaders continue to fuel violence in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and other places in the Middle East. Many innocent people have died, and continue to die from these reckless actions.

According to Abedi’s blood sister, Jomana Abedi, her brother was kind and loving. She said that although she was shocked at what happened, it isn’t that much of a shock because there were indications that her brother had become furious about the current Western-backed wars across the Middle East.

“I think he saw children—Muslim children—dying everywhere, and wanted revenge. He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and he wanted revenge. Whether he got that is between him and God,” Jomana revealed.

In 2016, Abedi suffered a personal tragedy when his friend Abdul Wahab Hafidah, also a Briton of Libyan descent, was stabbed to death in Manchester by unidentified gang members.

“Abedi viewed the attack as a hate crime,” an unnamed family friend said,” and grew increasingly angry about what he considered ill-treatment of Muslims in Britain. We knew he was going to cause trouble. You could see that something was going to happen, sooner or later.”